


All in my head (but it's getting crowded in here)

by lakester



Category: Randall and Hopkirk (Deceased) (1969)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-22
Updated: 2013-12-22
Packaged: 2018-01-05 15:30:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,538
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1095651
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lakester/pseuds/lakester
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>“I don't have near-death experiences. I have near-you experiences. Death might actually be restful.”</i> </p>
<p>It's been almost a whole week, and none of Jeff's clients or subjects have tried to kill him or anyone else. </p>
<p>Or in which Marty has the wrong end of the stick until he doesn't, Jeff has no ready cash but plans to change that, Jeannie has a new dress that might not have been the best idea and there might just be a ghost in the garage or a body in the brewery.</p>
            </blockquote>





	All in my head (but it's getting crowded in here)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Jewelmaiden](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jewelmaiden/gifts).



“I don't like it.” As if that wasn't clear by the scowl and crossed arms as Marty leant against the lamppost.

“I'm afraid we haven't got another choice,” Jeff said out of the corner of his mouth. It was always a challenge to argue with Marty in a public place. He usually tried to keep his voice low, his head and body angled away from anyone's direct line of sight, keeping everything as private as he could. 

Good intentions like that rarely lasted. He forgot himself around Marty sometimes, and there were times it seemed that his partner was realer than he was. It wasn't that he wasn't aware of the picture he must make to anyone else, it just never seemed that important compared to trying to get his point into Marty's stubbornly impermeable mind.

Right now however, was one of the times he almost wished he wasn't.

“Haven't...” Marty flung out his hands in exasperation. “Of course you have. There must be hundreds of solutions that don't involve my Jeannie! What about Sandy?”

“In the country for the weekend.”

“It's only Tuesday.” Marty protested. 

Jeff shrugged. “Must be a long weekend.”

“Cathy?”

“The redhead or the one with the legs?” Jeff pulled up memories of the two Cathy's in question.

“They both had legs, Jeff,” Marty said, tiredly. He looked like he wanted to shove his hands in his pockets if they weren't metaphysical constructs. “I meant the tall one, but either one would do by virtue of neither of them being my wife.”

“One of them objected to my dashing out of her flat in the middle of the night because I had to make an urgent phone call to the police, and the other one might be more inclined to help if you hadn't found out she was helping her boyfriend defraud little old ladies.” 

Marty sighed.

“Little rich old ladies, I'll remind you,” Jeff added, “who keep forgetting to pay our bill.”

“I couldn't help it,” Marty defended himself. “She looked harmless.”

“Cathy or Doris?” Jeff asked. “Because only one of them ever hit me over the head with a shovel.”

“I said 'duck'.” Marty said, “Besides, you know I'm not good at threatening people. And we're getting off the point, which is you can't ask Jeannie to marry you!”

“I'm not asking Jean to marry me,” Jeff said, in the world-weary tone of voice that had explained this twice already and was prescient enough to realise that this time wouldn't be the last. “I know I'm not asking her, Jeannie knows I'm not asking her, the only person who thinks I am is you!”

“And now him,” Marty said, nodding behind Jeff.

“And now who?” Jeff looked over his shoulder. An old man with a battered coat and an empty wheelbarrow stood staring at them – or at him. Jeff stepped back from the centre of the path and gestured past him. The wheelbarrow had a persistent squeak as the man pushed it past, all the time keeping a wary eye on Jeff, and hurried off. 

“Aside from anything else,” Jeff resumed his argument with Marty. “She knows me far too well and is far too sensible to say yes.”

“Of course she is,” Marty interrupted with a satisfied nod.

“Then again, she did agree to marry you, and she's far too good for either of us.” Jeff barged on with his conversation before Marty could decide how to react to that. “Which is why I'm asking her to pretend to be married to me.”

“That's worse.” Marty said.

Jeff raised a disbelieving eyebrow at that.

“I mean, better,” Marty's face relaxed into it's far too usually worried expression. “I mean, you'd better not try anything.” 

“Yes, Marty.” Jeff took a deep breath and gestured towards his car, parked at the end of the street. “Now can we go? I'm going out tonight – who knows, I might find someone else I can ask to go undercover with me. Walker's prepared to pay – and upfront – for this one.”

“All right,” Marty stopped to think a moment, and then pinged into existence by Jeff's car door - “How about Jenny?”

“Just get in the car, Marty.”

\---

It was hardly reasonable to expect a man to confront metaphysical conundrums before he'd had a chance to have a drink and a cigarette. 

So under normal circumstances – and Jeff could just about remember those – the appropriate reaction to seeing a ghost perched on your kitchen counter, staring with utmost concentration at the toaster in front of him might not have been to shrug, and with a glance at the alarm clock, head into to the bathroom – into which a overly enthusiastic plumber had managed to wedge a bath despite the room being not nearly big enough to fit around it - and stick his head in the sink. 

But this was a relatively good day of a relatively good week. 

No-one had tried to kill him, or arrest him. He had no painful bruises or scrapes that he hadn't intended to have, a couple of upcoming jobs, and the only fight he'd been in had been a short – mainly verbal - altercation with a former client. Former as in already paid rather than former as in deceased. Which was an improvement on both the case two weeks before, and the one before that. Dead men pay no bills. And it wasn't that he hadn't been pleased to see Mrs Fitzgerald led away by Inspector Large's men after she came after him with a cuttlefish and an axe, but clients were also much less inclined to pay up once you'd been instrumental in their arrest and the untimely – yet completely accidental - demise of their prize budgerigars.

The only thing that wasn't quite as he left it was, “Marty,” Jeff asked, fixing his tie as he went to perch on the end of the bed, looking for his shoes as he did so. “Marty.” he repeated a bit more sharply, and his friend looked up. “I don't suppose you've happened to see Jackie this morning?” 

“Tall, blonde, with a terrible taste in hats?” Marty checked.

“I hadn't noticed the hats,” Jeff said, casting his mind back to the night before. There had been curly red-blonde hair that hadn't been tamed by her short bob, a habit of biting her lip when she was trying not to laugh and an inexhaustible supply of stories about her new job as a...

“You wouldn't,” Marty shook his head. “They were in her bag. She left about three in the morning, worried that she'd miss her flight. Still half-asleep, I reckon.” He sighed. “She asked if I had any aspirin before she realised she couldn't see me.”

As a flight attendant. Right. 

Marty then remembered. “Oh. And she tried to steal your wallet.”

“What? Why didn't you try to stop her?” Marty just looked at Jeff and his anger tailed off a bit. “Yes, yes I know. But you could have at least woken me.”

“I tried,” Marty argued. “Not that it matters really. There wasn't anything in it for her to take, you'd left most of your cash at the office the night before.”

Jeff sighed, mentally crossing off Jackie's telephone number. Or was it Jacky's? He shrugged. “What were you doing here that late anyway? Too cold to go to sleep in the cemetery?”

Marty blinked away for a moment, flickering back into existence lying on Jeff's bed, leaning back on his elbows. “You know I don't like to sleep, Jeff. It's all very uncomfortable.”

Jeff turned to answer him. “Well, the next time I'm visiting your grave I'll be sure to bring pillows and a blanket.”

“It's not that,” said Marty. “I don't feel like I'm properly there when I'm asleep.” It was like he was that tree in a forest. If neither he nor Jeff weren't there to hear him, then how could he be sure he'd really exist if and when he woke up. “I can't waste my afterlife sleeping it away, I've only got ninety-eight years of it left.”

“Ninety seven,” Jeff corrected, pulling on his jacket. “And the rest of us have considerably fewer years left than that.”

“Are you sure?” Marty thought back. It was sometimes difficult to remember exactly what day or time it was. It wasn't something that was anywhere near the top of things he missed about being dead, but without the regular marker of waking up beside Jeannie or the little calendar he'd pin up by the side of the cooker after she'd marked it through with birthdays, sometimes he misplaced dates. 

“Yes, I'm sure.” Jeff checked one pocket after another, feeling for his keys. “In fact I'm prepared to guarantee that before your time's up the rest of us will have gone for a very well earned rest.”

“You know that what I meant,” Marty huffed. “On the coffee table, under the fruit bowl.”

“Under the what?” Jeff turned the up-turned bowl over. It hadn't had fruit in it since Marty and Jean had given it to him more than five years ago, and now held two pens, a roll of film, his keys – which Jeff scooped up – and an opened half-empty packet of cigarettes, with which he did likewise. “Got it. Thanks, Marty.”

“Are you coming?” Jeff asked Marty, pulling open the door. His ghostly friend was still lying down, arms by his side with his arms folded over his chest. Eyes shut and not moving he looked all too much like he was dead and coffined, and at the same time, too present and whole for Jeff to believe that Marty was any more dead than he was. Or that might be the case, but for the lack of any overt sign of Marty actually breathing, the left foot that had drifted down into the bed so that only the white shoe tips were visible and the vivid overlaid memory of – Jeff knew that funeral parlours could do some great work but after the mess of the accident... even without the details it had just taken the look on is face to persuade Jean to go for a closed casket.

He raised his voice, cudgelling his mind away from that direction. “Some of us have work to do,” Jeff called over. “And sometimes there are even people who're prepared to pay for us to do it.”

“Oh, very well.” Marty popped into place in the corridor behind him. “No rest for the wicked, eh, Jeff.” 

“You know, Marty, I might just be beginning to agree with you there.”

\---

Jeannie wasn't at the office when Jeff got there. Marty had flitted off mid-journey, he'd got a thoughtful gleam in his eye before claiming he'd heard something. 

Jeff had half expected him to come back moments later to tell him that Jean had been kidnapped by pirates, or she had been talking to a suspiciously handsome man, or something else that required her immediate rescue, but there was no return of a flustered ghost on the rest of the journey.

Jeff would have been more at ease at finding Jean already there. But if there was something wrong with Jeannie, or something else had buzzed into Marty's bonnet, his friend would come back and he could save his worrying until then.  
Instead he started going through the notes Jeannie had left on his desk. Mr Alders had been involved in a car accident that had left four people injured, one of those still in hospital and was making a claim for a substantial amount of property damage. The driver hadn't stopped nor had the car been identified. 

So far, at least, it looked as if their client – a short bustling man with an arm in a sling – might be disappointed in their progress. But then this was the fourth time in six months that someone had attempted to run him down and each time he had made an insurance claim for more than a hundred pounds. Mr Alders either had more important problems than a slightly cynical detective or - and in the three occasions he had met with Jeff, his sling had migrated from his left to his right arm and back again – so Jeff thought this more likely, his insurance company had several problems of the fraudulent variety. 

Not that Jeff had been hired to investigate his employer, or the scratches and broken headlights on his battered Ford. It was entirely possible that everything Alders claimed was completely genuine.

Paperwork was only so interesting, however, and until the next Sunshine couples retreat – brainwashing scheme or disgruntled husband, Jeff wasn't sure yet - Alders was their only case on the go at the moment. Jeff leaned back in his chair and pulled out a cigarette. He lit it and eyed the telephone.

The phone sat on his desk. Always had. Marty had always said Jeff had the better voice on the telephone and Jeff had joked that it made up for meeting him in person.

If Jeff had any spare time to think about it – and despite how endlessly long the breaks between cases might seem, he didn't, consciously or not he made sure of that – he might've expected that to change since Marty... It'd probably be easier to finish that sentence accurately, or at least without stumbling, if Marty had managed to permanently toddle off this mortal coil and was waving at him from a cloud somewhere, rather than sitting on his couch, wincing as the draw for the FA Cup was read out. Orient had a tough draw this year, but Jeff had barely noticed – he'd hardly made it to any matches these last few months anyway. Whereas Marty's team had had the temerity to start a good run the season after he died and now he alternated between pride and exasperation at them.

Still, when it was just him and Marty, he would talk to the clients first. Not the more professional cases, insurance companies and the like, but the more personal ones. Not every worried wife wanted to know exactly who her husband's been up to and how often, nor did every businessman want to know quite how and who had got one over on them. No-one likes being made a fool of, and while most of their clients wouldn't literally shoot the messenger, enough of them needed a bit of reinforcement when it came to putting bullets in the gun. Jeff was better at persuading them to go through with the business. Marty handled the details and the later work – including the invoices, when there were any.

Now it was just him and Jean; Jeff checked the clock, wherever she was right now. There wasn't room on her desk for a telephone, the old typewriter saw to that. She could always use it if she wanted. She knew that. Provided, of course, that they hadn't been cut off, and quite frankly, they needed to keep the line, so some months the phone bill got paid before or instead of rent or the electric.

The two of them – and their ghostly third part - managed, and it often was the two of them, despite Marty's protests to keep her safe in the office. Jeff might be more realistic in that regard; he would much rather she was safe too and anything he could do for that, and for her – as well as for Marty - he would. 

But the office was still somewhere that had a bomb in it not too long ago, and Jeff would be crossing his fingers that that fact slipped out of his friend's insubstantial head and stayed out. It wouldn't be much of a business with one third of the workforce dead, one stuck out off the office and the rest, him, running around like a startled horse while trying to nurse his way through a concussion. 

He'd toyed with putting up a sign 'It has been so many days since the last head injury' but it would do nothing but bother Jeannie, frighten off half their clients and as for the rest - it'd just give them an incentive to punch him and in most cases he didn't need to be offering any more of those.

\---

“Good morning, Jeff,” Jeannie's voice broke through the blur of figures he'd been trying to make sense of.

“Mmph,” Jeff said, then more coherently, as he peeled his face away from the ink smudged figures. “Good morning, Jeannie.”

“I didn't wake you, did I?” Jean was standing by the window, lit by the pale light that had struggled out of the greying skies she looked out on.

“Not at all,” Jeff added, “I was just thinking. I...” He choked off the end of the sentence.

“Thinking- what about, Jeff?” Jeannie looked at him, almost ethereal against the clear glass. Jeff had paled and spat out the almost swallowed stub of his cigarette, lucky it hadn't still been lit.

“Nothing, I was just going to say I didn't hear you come in. You...” He really didn't look all right. Jeff''s gaze kept bouncing away from her and back again. Strange, really, her dress wasn't that odd, and besides she'd never thought Jeff even noticed what she wore. It was hardly as if she'd been dragged through a hedge backwards wearing a burlap sack - just a simple white shift dress with diamond shaped buttons at the back. 

And while yes, normally she didn't wear white, thought it made her looked washed out and wan – Are you sure you're not sickening for something, Jeannie, Marty would ask, and then lay a hand on her head. She missed knowing there was someone who so wanted to look after here – the thermometer she had now just wasn't the same – but this went so well with the cream shoes Jenny had given her that she just had to try them together today.

Still, that wasn't important, “Are you all right?” Jeannie asked.

“I'm fine, Jean,” Jeff said, with a cough. He might have said that but he could hardly expect her to believe it. He was staring fixedly at a filing cabinet, muttering under his breath. “Are you sure.” was the only thing she could quite make out.

“Am I sure of what?” Jeannie asked.

“I do know that, but since I can see you too that doesn't help!” Jeff burst out in a loud, blunt tone.

“I am sorry I wasn't here earlier, but there's no need to shout.” Jeannie said. Jeff didn't look hungover, but she went to pull the blinds to. If he hadn't then it wouldn't hurt. “Are you sure you're not feeling a bit under the weather?” 

“Well, I should think you'd be able to tell,” he said conversationally.

That wasn't exactly helpful, so Jeannie decided to ignore that in favour of trying to shut the blinds, only they were stuck, the cord refusing to move no matter how she pulled at it. “Jeff, could you give me a hand?” she asked over her shoulder.

“Fine,” Jeff said, his gaze glancing off of her as he continued. “But I want you to remember I'm only doing this because you asked me to.”

“Jeannie,” he said, and pulled her into a hug that spun her around and left Jeff standing by the window. “Thank you.” He quickly turned back to the window and jerked hard at the cord. There was a snap-crack that came somewhere from the mechanism at top of the window and Jeff sighed in relief as the blinds closed abruptly. “Actually, Jeannie I do have something of a headache-” his eyes flicked sideways – or maybe that was the light bulb - “If you had some aspirin.”

“I'm not sure if I've got some with me.” Jeannie found her bag and dug around in it. “No, I can't find anything.”

“Oh,” said Jeff, sat back behind his desk. “Not to worry. Were there any messages from yesterday that I missed.”

“Only two,” Jeannie said, reaching for her notepad. “Mr Davis wanted to confirm your testimony in the McGregor case. They'll be coming up to trial next week.”

“That was the two brothers with the private train and ticket scam last March?” Jeff checked. 

“That's right,” Jeannie said. “I'll look out your notes later today. Inspector Large dropped by to assure you that he knows you did it and that he might consider going easy on you if you tell him everything about the Weissman heist.”

“Is that the one where the British Library was broken into? How valuable could that be?” Jeff asked.

“The inspector was quite sure you wouldn't be interested in the reward.” Jeannie looked up from her notes. “He was quite imaginative in his threats if you were to attempt to claim it.”

“Not interested,” Jeff said, scribbling something down in front of him. “One might be forgiven for thinking the man's never met me before.”

“I think there might be some occasions that he's tried to forget.” Jeannie said, with a smile, and passed him messages much more neatly written than his handwriting was ever likely to be. “I've got the details here. And you have a meeting at Langton and Warrender's at three.” 

“What for?” Jeff asked.

“They were much too careful to say much on the phone.” Jeannie told him. “But the gentleman who called – Mr Robertson – sounded very concerned, wanted you to see them in complete confidence.”

“I am the soul of discretion, Jeannie,” Jeff looked at the clock, which had just gone one o'clock, and then glancing about the rest of the room as he crossed to the door. “You might be very surprised at the things that I keep under my hat.”

The door closed behind Jeff, and shortly after that, the outer one banged shut too. There wasn't a lot of sound-proofing but Jeannie only heard the start of the sentence. “Well, of course it's a not a real hat; it's not as if you'd fit otherwise.”

\--

“Looks like a nice place,” Marty said. “The wrought iron gates are a nice touch. Maybe a bit fancy, but it's definitely a classier way of saying keep out.”

Jeff nodded. Past the high gates and equally high, and even sturdier walls there was a swooping gravel arc up to a three storey building, with walls that seemed to be as much glass as they did stone and a roof full of antennae that jutted out from all angles. The Vauxhall Victor trundled slowly up the drive, barely kicking up any stones as it passed.

“What do you reckon all that's for, then?” Jeff nodded at the roof. 

“I don't know,” Marty said. “Didn't you say they sold cars? That looks more like their trying to catch lightning.”

“They don't sell cars,” Jeff said. “They take a good car.”

“Not like yours then.” Marty interrupted.

“No,” Jeff agreed. Not altogether easily because his Victor worked just fine most of the time, and the amount of money he had paid – not to mention still owed – for repairs over the years could probably have bought a car that was newer and – hopefully - less likely to break down on him. “Sports-cars mainly, that are fixed up to run even faster. The old man of the firm is Langton. No-one's seen Warrender in years; I'm not sure if he even existed in the first place.”

“Wouldn't have thought there's a lot of money in that.” Marty said as Jeff pulled the car to a halt outside the building. This close to the building, the rows of metal garage doors that fitted around the ground floor of the building were clearly visible. “Not enough for a place like this.”

“Apparently there are quite a few people,” Jeff said, not getting out of the car just yet. “Who are willing to pay a lot of money for a car that'll go a lot faster than it looks, and can carry more than it might appear to say, a too-interested policeman. A LaW special can set you back quite a bit.”

“So they have a line in getaway cars,” Marty said.

Jeff shrugged and pulled the keys out of the ignition. “Nothing's ever been proven. There's a lot of middlemen and a lot more money. They can plausibly deny almost anything short of murder.”

“That's all very well, Jeff,” Marty popped out of the car, “But if they can do all that then what do they want you for?”

“That's what I'm here to find out,” Jeff said. A couple of men in dark suits trotted out of the main door of the building and headed in their direction. “So, why don't you have a look about while I talk to these gentlemen?”

“Looking for anything in particular?” Marty asked, craning his neck up to the spiky roof.

“Just for anything you can find,” Jeff said, moving away from the car. “As long as you keep an ear out for me.”

“I always do,” Marty nodded – Jeff's presence, like Jeannie's, was a reassuring warmth in the cold of the back of his mind when he wasn't even trying to find them - and disappeared.

\--

The roof was a long way from the ground. Marty couldn't remember being scared of heights before – he might have been a little cautious but that was only sensible. There was something there besides the wind that whipped right through him, a low grind through the back of his jaw and the base of his spine. It felt like the whirring of a dentist's drill, heard from a hard-backed chair in the waiting room had sounded. 

“Is there anybody there?” Marty called out. “I'll have you know I'm armed and extremely dangerous.”

There was no answer other than cold blast of wind that blew right up the back of his jacket. 

Marty spun around, feeling unaccountably claustrophobic under a sky that seemed entirely too close and intent on rushing down on his head.

He instinctively flickered away, and found himself standing half on the edge of the building and more than half off it. The sky here seemed normal, the wind nippy but not so chill as it had a few moment ago. “Bloody piece of machinery,” Marty said with more confidence, as he launched an insubstantial kick at the antennae, along with a more substantial push.

He was going inside. He shouldn't have to stay outside just because he was a ghost. Besides it made him dizzy out here - he didn't like it.

\---

“So you see, Mr Randall, what our problem is?” Mr Robertson was a tall, distinguished looking man whose blond hair was starting to become less blond and more silver. His glasses were tied on a cord around his neck, and as he looked down at the plans unfolded on the desk between himself and Jeff his eyes squinted.

“Not exactly,” Jeff hedged. “I understand that you've had complaints-” 

“Concerns.” Mr Lambert clarified from his position by the door. He was shorter than Jeff, with hair cut a little too close to his skull and a suit that, though well tailored, failed to hide the fact that he was armed. 

So was Jeff, but at least he was restrained about it. He acknowledged Lambert's interruption with a nod. “And that you're worried about your suppliers. Which I can certainly take a look at for you. But if this is theft, shouldn't the police be involved? I wouldn't want to get in the way of that.” That wasn't true. It might be easier if they weren't also investigating, but Jeff had no interest in letting that – or modesty - get in the way of a paying job.

Lambert snorted behind him and Jeff studiously ignored him. He would rather have someone watching the armed and besuited thug at his back, but Marty had looked even paler than usual when he appeared before staring at the ceiling and dropping out of sight again. And no-one had threatened him yet.

“We would prefer the police not be involved at this stage.” Robertson looked Jeff in the eye, regretfully. It was hard to tell how much of that was genuine. Maybe twenty-thirty percent? “Our reputation, you understand. If it were to be widely thought that some of our cars were...”

“Prone to damage, likely to blow up and break down?”

“Nothing that serious.” Robertson's mouth narrowed into a straight line.

“I'm sure it's not,” Jeff agreed easily. “But I can't tell a mark one from a mark seven, so unless there's some more details...” He could read upside-down pretty well, but even so he was barely getting anything from the array of Robertson's papers. Maybe if he leaned forward?

“No,” Robertson frowned down at the papers on his desk, shuffling them into a pile that Jeff couldn't make out any more of. “This is highly confidential information. If you find any suspect components then Lambert here can identify them for you.”

Lambert did not look like someone who could identify malfunctions in highly technical equipment. He looked like someone who would happily beat Jeff over the head with said equipment until either it or Jeff or both really were broken. Still, he also looked like someone whose firm was prepared to put a considerable amount of money into Jeff's hand in the pursuit of ugly metal objects smaller than the size of Jeff's fist. So. It wasn't as if there was a real choice there. 

Jeff held out his hand. “It'll be a pleasure working with you.”

It was just then that the study door burst open. A bright young thing, all dark hair and darker eyes, wrapped in a lab coat. “I'm sorry, Mr Robertson, but we've had a breach malfunction in...”

“Miss Malik, not now,” Robertson bluntly overrode her concern. Which was a pity, when Jeff had heard enough to quirk his interest, but not enough to satisfy it. Robertson was leafing through a clipboard of notes the young lady had handed to him. “Mr Lambert, I'm sure Mr Randall has all the information he needs – if you could escort him out.”

Jeff would have protested, if it wasn't for the iron grip on his shoulder that indicated he was one step away from escorted becoming thrown and didn't feel inclined to jump off that edge just yet.

\---

“What's up with you?” Jeff asked as Marty appeared in the passenger seat beside him. Marty looked tired and more rumpled than usual. Than usual since he was dead. Marty when he had been alive had been less sharp around the edges. Jeff sometimes had to remind himself of that – people change after they're dead, other than the obvious, of course.

“I don't like that place, Jeff,” Marty said, his hair settling back down and the lines of his suit straightening even as Jeff watched. Marty noticed. “And keep your eyes on the road.”

“Relax, Marty. There's no-one out here for miles,” Jeff said. The Victor – sped was probably putting it generously – rumbled along, the road ahead clear of any other traffic. “At any rate, did you find anything? Set off any alarms? You looked as pale as a sheet in there.”

Marty shook his head. “No, not a thing. Quite surprising really, but there was hardly anyone about. And very little equipment, for an engineering works, but nothing obvious going on.”

“Are you sure?” asked Jeff. “Because I was almost thrown out of the grounds for overhearing about a malfunctioning something or other – that wasn't you?”

“I don't think so.” Marty thought hard. “I hardly touched anything in the place.”

“Well, they definitely weren't happy.” Jeff negotiated a tricky bend as Marty briefly shut his eyes. “More so than one might expect for an investigation into potentially fraudulent suppliers.”

“Anyway, what about you?” Jeff pressed. “You didn't look well.”

“Those aerials gave me a headache.” Marty's eyes looked into the distance, tilting his head back into the seat. “I think I need a holiday.”

“You and me both.” Jeff looked more carefully at his partner. Ghosts weren't supposed to get tired were they? Not that he had a lot of non-Marty related experience in the matter but still. “But before you pop off to the seaside or to the South of France we've still got a job to do.” Jeff started to explain. 

\---

“I swear, Jeff Randall, the dead will walk before you wake up.”

Jeff didn't snort, grunt or even turn his head. Who'd have thought the driver's seat of an Austin Mini – of Marty's Mini, in fact – was that easy to rest in? Brewster Engineering Limited still ran out of the old warehouse. James P. Franklin had made something of a hostile takeover (there weren't a lot of friendly ones that would leave the coppers still pulling bits of Richie Brewster out of the river, two months later) and decided that car parts were apparently a much more lucrative line than alcohol proofed enough to scour drains and televisions that regularly fell off the backs of lorries, but he must have liked the wallpaper for the firm hadn't moved.

But if Jeff had to borrow Marty's car to keep watch on the old Brewster place then at the very least he had a responsibility to keep its former owner entertained, as well as its wing mirrors intact.

Instead here he was, sleeping away like a baby when it was hardly – Marty flashed over to the backseat behind Jeff and leaned in over his shoulder to check the time – hardly two o'clock in the morning. 

Marty flipped back to the passenger seat with a frown, had Jeff been looking more tired lately? Marty might sleep like the metaphorical and literal dead when he wanted to, but he wasn't sure about Jeff. It was probably just one or too many nights late enough to be early mornings, but Marty didn't like it. What is there was something wrong? What if Jeff was ill? If he was too sick to work? What would Jeannie do? How would Marty and Jeff look after her then? She couldn't run the business on here own, especially if she needed to look after Jeff as well – there just wouldn't be time. And Jeff might start getting ideas. Marty shook his head decisively at that. 

“You're seeing a doctor and that's that.” Marty told the sleeping figure beside him. “So don't argue.”

The warehouse gates remained resolutely shut, as they had done in the hours since Jeff had parked up the Mini and pulled an old picnic blanket round him. There was no sign of someone stealing the goods, exchanging them for less high-quality material or sabotaging them. Marty flickered out of the car, briefly stopping in the yard, the office over the warehouse proper and through several stacks of metal canisters and frameworks that looked the same as they had the last time he did this. 

He folded his arms and leaned back as he appeared back in the car, regaining his earlier train of thought.

“And I mean the unpleasant kind of dead person. Not someone like me, but someone who'll quite happily suck the blood right out of you before Franklin and his goons have a chance to do it first.” Marty looked around a moment. It really was quite dark out there. The heavy cloud cover made what little lighting there was seem dull and lifeless as it struggled through the night. 

“And you can be sure I'm going to write to the council about their shoddy street maintenance – there should be much better lighting than this.” Marty told the unhearing darkness and Jeff. Neither seemed particularly inclined to listen to him. 

“Not that there's any such thing as vampires.” And would he want to see them coming if there were? He might have sounded more convincing if he'd had actually meant it, but the whole ghost-hood took something of a swing at a body's philosophical certainties. Granted, he hadn't seen one in the last three years, but he hadn't seen a ghost in the more than thirty before that and yet here he was, with no guarantee whether anything else was or wasn't the load of old rubbish that it almost certainly was.

That was it. He'd had enough. “Jeff, wake up!”

Jeff ignored him, the selfish, sleeping... Marty shouted again. “Jeff!”

“Huwha-” Jeff's eyes scrunched together as he blinked awake, and rolled into a more upright position. “What is it?” 

“Nothing,” Marty said. “And you were asleep.”

“I'm very sorry I missed it.” Jeff said, leaning forward, as if his face were closer to the windscreen then he just might be able to make out something that wasn't the banging of the hanging sign against the closed gates, or the scrape of branches. “But I'm sure you'll tell me all about it.” He angled his wristwatch so it caught the light. “We'll give it a couple more hours.”

\---

A couple of hours made no difference. There was nothing there for the rest of the night. It was the same the next night. And the one after that. The third night he'd spent a number of hours in a police interview room, trying to explain that he hadn't been out soliciting for ladies of the night. Bloody, Nelson. 

Jeff had just about made up his mind to call it a day and file a report to the effect that the engineering firm was – not clean, but was neither intentionally nor accidentally sabotaging or stealing components. 

He had a feeling they wouldn't like that though, and something niggled in the back of his mind, so Jeff swung round the warehouse in daylight this time. There was no need to hurry in – Jean had a dentist appointment and Marty was heaven – or somewhere else – knew where.

The street didn't look much better in the cold light of morning – at one point someone with more enthusiasm than sense had planted pear trees along one side of the tarmacked road at they'd been struggling there ever since. Jeff parked his car a few yards down from the main gate, with a good view of any comings and goings from where he stood, leaning against the driver's side door and taking a welcome early morning drag of a smoke.

“Why don't you come inside, Mr Randall?” The voice behind him was high and nasal and not particularly menacing. But then, with the tap of a gun barrel against the middle of his back, Jeff supposed it didn't need to be. 

Jeff turned round – no sudden moves and hands away from his pockets silently cursing the fact that his gun was currently half a dozen miles away being used as a paperweight. The voice had a friend – six foot of muscle that could have been a lumberjack, carrying a swaying length of wood on his shoulder – but evidently despite being the brains of the pair, broken nose didn't seem overly fond of conversation. 

“Lets go,” he said. Waving the gun in the direction of the warehouse doors. Unfortunately not far enough for Jeff to make a less than half suicidal move.

“I would,” Jeff apologised insincerely. “But my mother always told me not to go into strange buildings with armed men.” He looked round. Today was a fine time for Marty to start having a lie-in. “Marty?”

“I don't care what your mother told you.” The man with the gun said, and his friend illustrated how little they cared about the late Mrs Randall – and how thankful was Jeff that she hadn't chosen to haunt him – with a shove in the same direction.

“All right,” Jeff acquiesced, stubbing out his cigarette and dropping it in the gutter. “After you.” Both of the other men scowled. “Or I suppose not. Where are you?” he said, and looked around.

“Just get moving.”

\---

“So, Randall. What have you done with him?”

“With who?” Jeff's arms were tied behind his back and then secured again to the chair he'd been very firmly encouraged to sit on. It was a very nice chair, covered in some kind of green material patterned with ferns and flowers. The chair arms were thinly carved but remarkably sturdy and the blood dripping down from his ear and the back of his head were going to spoil it badly.

“We know you broke him out.” Franklin asked the questions and tall and squeaky provided a more physical punctuation.

“I haven't broken anyone out of anywhere.” Jeff repeated. It was obvious that this wasn't the right answer to the question, but he didn't have any others and wouldn't be inclined to provide them if he did.

Another clout hit the back of his head and Jeff collapsed forwards into stars.

\---

“If he won't talk to us, I don't want him talking to anyone.” Franklin smoothed down the array of buttons on his jacket as he spoke down the phone.

That did not sound good. That did not sound good at all. Marty hovered – between finding Jeff – because it had to be Jeff he was talking about, there were only so many enemies who wanted him dead that his partner was capable of accruing in a couple of days - and listening further. Jeff was the priority – they could figure out this business of kidnapped men and ghosts and engine parts together, he couldn't – didn't want to do this on his own.

\---

“Jeff. Jeff, come on Jeff.” Marty's voice was faint and fuzzy in the distance. “You can't spend the day sleeping away. We've got work to do.” The voice faded out and back again. “They're going to kill you, Jeff.”

“Not today,” Jeff muttered half-consciously. “I'm busy.”

“Yes, today!” Martin corrected, with considerable volume. “Or possibly tomorrow. I think they're waiting on a phone call from their boss.”

“'s not Franklin,” asked Jeff. The bruising and swelling around his mouth was making it difficult to talk. Calhoun and Frazer had been amateurs, with hot-heads and without the brains in them to realise it would be easier for him to talk sense if his teeth weren't loosened.

“I don't think so,” said Marty. “He's far too worried to be the man at the top. And how would he know who you are?”

“M' wallet,” Jeff put in.

“Right,” Marty said. “Whatever it is, you need to get out of here.” Here was a small storage area – part of the larger warehouse complex it was just big enough to hold Jeff, racks of bottles – sadly empty – and cans of paint – which might or might not be full. Marty couldn't tell and right this moment Jeff didn't care.

“Think of something, Marty.” Jeff looked a little more awake, as he looked around the room, tugging at the ropes that held him – as securely as ever – to the now more torn and battered chair.

“I'm trying,” Marty was. He could probably made one of the bottles or paint cans over. He might even be able to knock over the chair Jeff was tied to, but all that would do would drop his friend on the floor and prompt even more complaints. “Does anyone know you're here?”

“No-one,” Jeff said. “I didn't know I was going to be here until this morning. Spur of the moment decision.”

“How many times have I told you those just don't work,” Marty complained. He flitted behind Jeff and scowled at the strength of the knots and the ropes. “You wouldn't have half as many near-death experiences if you'd just think.”

“I don't have near-death experiences. I have near-you experiences. Death might actually be restful.”

“Well, that just goes to show what you know,” Marty replied. “I haven't had a full night's sleep since I died.”

“You might sleep better if you didn’t nap during cases,” Jeff retorted.

“I don't do that.” Marty blinked back into existence in front of Jeff to better argue with him.

“What about the professor – last October.” Jeff said, “You remember – the green uniform beetles and the endless slide-shows of his research. It was almost a relief when the Hall brothers finally took a shot at him.”

“Missed though,” Marty pointed out.

“I don't know, Sammy claimed he was aiming at the projection reel. Trying to save us all some misery.”

“If he'd wanted to do that he could have blown it away an hour before.” Marty commiserated.

“How would you know? I could hear you snoring in the back row after fifteen minutes. It's like I can't take you anywhere.” Jeff said, still futilely twisting his left arm. It felt a little looser than the right.

“You're a fine one to talk.” said Marty. “I was awake enough to see you were one of the ones cheering when the film went up in flames.”

“That's perfectly natural. There's only so many pictures of copulating rabbits a man can be reasonably expected to look at. And we'd passed that point some time ago.” Jeff added.

“Pity Hall didn't try that line on the judge.”

“I think it was something in the way he phrased it.” Jeff said, understatedly. “The judge took against his outburst in the docks.”

“The one where he promised to slit the throats of the judge's entire family, starting with their pet bunny, Flopsy.” checked Marty.

“That'll do it.”

“I didn't even know Harrison kept pets,” said Marty. “He never...” He interrupted himself, “I can't stay here,” and cast a worried glance at the door.

“Well,” said Jeff. “My stay's more than likely to become permanent if you don't think of something.”

“I'm trying, Jeff, but it's not easy,” Marty said. “Just. Just if they come back, try and hold them off as long as you can. I'll just be a minute. I hope.”

“Great,” Jeff addressed the empty air that Marty had just left. “How am I supposed to do that – juggle for them? I don't know.” He shook his head, flinched as it stabbed a reminder to him of what a very bad idea that was, and went back to yanking at his bonds..

\---

Marty didn't like it when Jeff almost died. Jeff didn't like it either, he supposed, but that wasn't the point. It's not like he got to watch it happen each time. At least Marty had had the common courtesy to only die once. It panicked him enough when Jeff's temporarily dead and dressed in white; Marty didn't like to think how he'd cope if he saw Jeannie like that and she could see him and know exactly how badly he'd broken his promises and failed her. Jeff could look after himself – or with a little help, most of the time – but he'd promised to protect Jeannie, and anything could happen to her now he wasn't as here as he was supposed to be. 

Anything, like, Marty cocked his head; being drugged semi-conscious. “That's great!” he said and appeared at Jeannie's side. “Not that I meant it like that,” he apologised to her and tried to peer into her fixed open mouth around the dentist and his sharp edged tools. “Why don't you get out of the way?” he asked, before turning back to Jeannie, still largely out of it. “That's not Mr Peterson.” Reginald Peterson had been almost sixty and balding. Marty had liked him, had liked the thought of him frightening their children some day. “I'm not sure I like this one – though I am sorry you've been hurting. You should have said something.”

She didn't seem to hear him. But neither did she seem to notice the dentist put down the last of his tools, as he said. “I think that'll be the last of them, Mrs Hopkirk.” 

“Oh right,” Marty leaned in to Jean, tilted back in the chair. “Jeannie, Jeff's got himself into trouble again. Not that that's important at the moment. I need you to phone the police as soon as you can. Jeff hasn't got much time.”

“Not much time,” Jeannie garbled.

“Sorry, Mrs Hopkirk?” The dentist looked over at Jean, eyebrows raising up to his receding hairline. 

“Not you, idiot.” Marty said.

“'diot.” Jeannie repeated. And the eyebrows rose further as the dentist harrumphed and turned back to his notes.

“The police.” Marty looked at Jeannie. Her eyes were starting to clear, and while any other time he could stand there staring into her eyes until his own crossed, right now he needed her to stay under and listening to him just a little longer. “They need to go to Brewster's on the south side of Darling Street and the need to go now.”

“Go now.”

“In a few minutes, Mrs Hopkirk,” the dentist said without turning back, “We need to make sure the gas has worn quite off.”

“I wish I could stay, Jeannie,” Marty said, the ever present distance between them feeling as wide as ever though he was standing right beside her. “I do. I love you, my darling. But I have to find Jeff. You know he'd be lost without us.”

“Love Jeff... lost us.”

“Not either of you, Jeannie,” Marty said, his face set in grim determination. “Not if I can help it. And not if you _wake up_.”

\---

There wasn't anyone in the small room Jeff had been kept in. There were signs of a struggle though, and if Marty had been able to leave footprints he'd have left a bespattered trail of multi-coloured prints across the room. 

Jeff wasn't out in the street. He hadn't made it back to the office either. It was looking distinctly unlikely that he'd managed to make an escape in the time it'd taken to get a message through to Jeannie.

He flipped into Franklin's office, but it was empty too. Not just of Franklin, but the papers, files and even the telephone wires had been pulled out of the wall. “You must have frightened them, Jeff, but where are you now?”

He looked out of the window onto the yard below. He could see Jeff's car there, so his friend had to be about here somewhere – if he hadn't been bundled into the back of one of the firm's delivery lorries and – Marty slammed his eyes shut and concentrated on Jeff – Jeff, alive and rolling his eyes at Marty, in a suit just a few shades darker a brown than his eyes, that hung over an almost wiry frame and on his left hand a wristwatch that always ran faster than it should. Women like it when you show you're keen, he'd told Marty once and Marty's only comment had been 'Really?' Because one of them was married and the other had a relationship count that ended in weeks if he was lucky and days if he wasn't. Marty tried to hold on to that provoking muddle of affections and sort of pushed sideways.

“Can't say I like what you've done with the place,” he said, as he opened his eyes. It was cold and dark with a bitter sense in the back of the throat of old meat and hops. Marty pulled his arms closer around his body and tried to resist the urge to shiver.

He paced out several yards between walls, his feet alternating between tripping over empty bottles and skimming straight through them, depending on whether he was paying attention. It looked to be some kind of cold storage left over from its brewing days.. It took him several minutes before he found Jeff lying by a wall – his head was twisted awkwardly, blood congealed behind both ears and barely any breath misting in front of him. 

“You look like you've been having all kinds of fun without me,” Marty told his unconscious friend, as he sat down beside him. He was a ghost, and shouldn't feel the cold that was leaching up through his shoes and trousers. Marty sighed – he'd never managed to learn that trick, assuming it was even something he could actually do. Apart from other ghosts being really quite scary, homicidal, or generally fake it would have been nice to feel he wasn't struggling all this out on his own – he'd spent his spare hours last week trying to practise his fine motor control and so far he couldn't even start the toaster.

“Come on, Jeff, wake up,” Marty looked at the still figure of the most active member of the Randall and Hopkirk partnership and worried. Jeff didn't look too good. “You don't want to be asleep when the cavalry comes.” If they did and they had to.

Marty continued to ramble on. As much to fill the almost silence with buckets of word before his well ran dry.

“This really won't work, you know.”

There was a pale white-clad figure peering over the other side of the body lying on the floor at Marty's feet. Marty looked up, and, “You!” 

Jeff's face frowned at him which was not good because it wasn't the man he'd been talking to for the past – how long did it take to raise a group of policemen to search a building? The tie was different to Marty's, the white suit and shirt a bleached mirror to what Jeff normally wore. And he was talking – rather than simply making irate hand gestures at Marty before vanishing. He didn't look like he was vanishing now, he looked as real as Marty felt.

“You!” Marty repeated. He felt it was necessary. “You... You... get back in there at once!” He jabbed at the figure on the floor.

“What's the matter, Marty?” Not Jeff – Marty refused to let him be Jeff, or for Jeff to be him – asked. “There's not something wrong with my outfit?”

“It doesn't suit you,” Marty said, dredging up all his reserves of stubbornness. “Now get back in there.” He'd been apprehensive, daunted when he'd met Bugsy – why couldn't Jeff be the same this time around now he was the senior ghost?

“That looks rather uncomfortable in there to me, Marty,” Jeff argued.

“That's not the point,” Marty kept his line of sight on the body – on Jeff that was lying on the floor, and not the one that was standing upright and talking and being insistently and it'd-damn-well-better-be-temporarily dead at him. Marty's voice was almost absolutely steady as he sat down by Jeff's body. “You can't be dead,” the words coming out of him because he couldn't hold them in. “You can't die like this.... I'm not ready.”

“I wasn't ready either,” the ghostly figure that was Jeff squatted down by Marty. “But I don't recall Lambert's goons asking if I'd mind being dumped in here, unconscious and bleeding in order to freeze to death.”

“I'm surprised it worked.” Marty looked away from, and over to Jeff.

“Really,” Jeff said. “Well, go on then. You're the expert.”

“I don't know,” Marty sighed. “I don't know how I'm going to haunt you if you're already dead.”

“Can a ghost have a ghost?” Jeff said. He reached out and tapped Marty on the arm.

“Did you hear that?” Marty asked. Something outside the storeroom had thudded or clunked. 

“No, nothing,” Jeff looked about the room.

“Come on, Jeff,” Marty told him. “You won't like being dead. It's really not all it's cracked up to be.” He took a breath, unnecessarily, but habit. “And I won't have you haunting Jeannie. You'll frighten her. Wait – did you say Lambert's goons? Not Franklin's?”

“No,” Jeff said. “It was Lambert and two heavies who looked like this wasn't their first time.”

“Lambert and Franklin working together?” Marty suggested. He was sure the clanking was louder now.

“I think so,” Jeff mulled over in his newly impalpable brain. For a blink of an eye he faded, concentrating. “But what for? Money? The firm's got to be paying him well, how much more could he need?”

“Jeff.” Marty could definitely hear something now. He hoped it wasn't Franklin's men or Lambert's or anyone else who currently had reason to wish Jeff dead. “I need you to trust me.”

“Of course I do. You know that..” Jeff said, then more dubiously. “Most of the time. Why?”

“I'm sorry about this,” Marty said as he gave Jeff a sudden push, his hands warm and twitching at the unexpected physical contact. He hadn't felt cold, but he hadn't felt anything at all since his death and return. Pouring out of the grave had felt like he'd been squashed down to the size of a pin and allowed to pop back to his original size, it hadn't felt anything like he'd remembered from before. He watched Jeff, off guard, stumble backward and fall back through and into his own body. “I need you alive.”

Marty couldn't check for a pulse. He steeled himself and ducked his head inside Jeff. It wasn't helpful. Even if his eyes had been used to processing what they saw, he wasn't a doctor. There were the faintest signs of movement and Marty decided to assume they were a positive sign and ignore the wooziness and headache that had gone along with looking.

He disappeared, reappearing outside of the cold store. There were two uniformed policemen poking through some of the junk accrued about the corners of the main body of the warehouse. “Over here,” he called before realising. Right.

Flickering to back inside the vault he checked Jeff again for any sign of his ghostly self. Finding none, Marty turned to drink. He sat by Jeff and blew bottle after bottle against the door of the storeroom, sending thuds and crashes as they shattered against it. “Just one more,” he told himself, exhausted enough he could barely sit upright and launched a final bottle at the door.

\---

The first thing Jeff saw when he regained consciousness was Inspector Large's face. It was not a particularly pleasant or happy sight at the best of times, and Jeff would have been quite happy to lurch back into the unconsciousness of his hospital bed in order to not have to look at it any more.

Unfortunately neither his body, nor the inspector was that cooperative. Instead Jeff hauled up one eyelid and then a second.

“Finally, Randall,” the inspector said, in a voice that boomed round the inside of Jeff's skull like he had a bloody awful hangover without any memory of the entertaining part of the evening. “I almost thought you were going to get away from me there.”

“You mean,” It was a softer, more welcome voice that corrected him. “We were worried about you.” Relief echoed through the words. Jeannie was perched on a seat at the other side of his hospital bed, in a dress as sunshine bright as her voice had been.

“I'll say what I mean,” Large scowled. “And don't think I haven't decided not to charge you yet for the ungrateful assault on the rescuing officers.”

“Assault? I could barely move a muscle when your tardy men showed up.” Jeff's memory wasn't entirely clear on that point, but he didn't need to be clear to argue with the inspector. “I almost died.” That didn't seem quite right.

“Yes,” Inspector Large nodded. “That was a pity.” He continued, “It's a shame your nosing about wasn't in time to save the other occupant of that storage vault.”

“There was someone else there.” Jeff checked. “Another body?”

“Preliminarily identified as a Dennis Warrender. Dead for at least three years so the doctor's tell me.” The inspector managed a smile. “So you're off the hook for that one, Randall.”

“I was never on it, inspector,” Jeff rebutted. “And that can't be true. Robertson showed me some of their latest designs – barely a couple of months old – and all of them initialled by Warrender.”

The inspector folded up his notebook into a jacket pocket. “I'll come back when you've decided to make some sense.”

“Enjoy the wait, Inspector.” Jeff rearranged his face into a smile despite the throbbing headache.

“I think the bang on the head has scrambled your friend's memory, Mrs Hopkirk.” Large added. “I'll see myself out.”

“You certainly will, Inspector.” Jean said.

When the inspector had gone, Jeannie tried to fill in some of the gaps. The storeroom, the bodies, the sudden hunch that she'd had that he was in trouble.

“More than usual?” he prodded, trying to nudge a smile out of her.

“I'd be grateful if you'd avoid any more people trying to kill you.” Jeannie told him. “You're very much someone I'd rather have around.”

“I'll try,” Jeff joked. “No-one trying to kill me unless it completely accidental, I swear.” 

After that it all got a bit blurred. Jeannie left. There was a doctor in a white coat and a frown, and a nurse with a smile that Jeff didn't have the energy to reciprocate. Finally, there was a low but steady thud of a headache and a white-suited Marty occupying the same chair that Jean had with a similarly worried expression.

“Are you sure you're all right?” Marty asked. He kept looking around, as if expecting to see something. Jeff wasn't sure what, perhaps that he'd grown a second head.

“Nothing permanently broken,” Jeff said. “But what's this about my throwing bottles at Large's men. I was still tied up when they threw me in there – I remember that much.”

“I was trying to attract some attention,” Marty said, “and didn't notice they'd found the door and opened it. It wasn't a full bottle. I'm not sure I could have managed that by then.”

“Well, as long as you didn't waste a good drink.”

“It might have been the last,” Marty said. “The police have rounded up anyone associated with Brewster's that they could find. They're still looking for Franklin, but someone squealed on Lambert. Robertson insisted he knew nothing about it.” He shrugged. “Do you remember much about when you were in the storeroom?”

“Just that it was cold,” Jeff said. “I'm sorry to have missed your valiant rescue attempt through vandalism and dentistry.”

“Well, next time you could try having a near-death experience that pays better,” Marty said. “Langton and Warrender's have filed for bankruptcy. I'm not sure how that was our fault but Jeannie's having problems getting money out of them.”

“I still don't know how Warrender was designing plans years after he died.” Jeff said. “If it was still him. A ghost coming back to find your murderer is one thing, but coming back to design car parts for the people who killed you?”

“Maybe he didn't want to,” Marty said, thinking of a cage of antennae, a headache, a kick and panic at a breach.

Jeff shrugged. “And after I almost made a whole week without anyone trying to kill me.”

“You should be very proud,” Marty interjected.

“I am.” This time when Jeff nodded there was no sudden urge to vomit. “But I think we all could do with a holiday. Do you think you and Jeannie would like the South of France? Two whole weeks with no cases that'll try to kill me. Just a lot of sun and sand and all of that somewhere very warm.”

“That sounds great, Jeff.” Marty nodded. “But really... I've always wanted to learn how to ski.”

There was a thud as Jeff thumped back onto his pillow.

Marty looked at him. “Well, what did I say?”


End file.
